Butt Kick­ing, for Goodness!

Baldur’s Gate. Baldur’s Gate II: Shad­ows of Amn, Icewind Dale. These games hold a spe­cial place in my heart. I was at the Edmon­ton Baldur’s Gate launch party when I was cov­er­ing it for local TV news. Then later, when I worked for BioWare, I con­trib­uted to the mar­ket­ing and com­mu­nic­a­tions efforts of these games and the Infin­ity Engine that they’re built on.

At the time, there was abso­lutely noth­ing else that could bring the true D&D exper­i­ence, the party-dungeon-crawling-holy-crap-is-that-a-Beholder exper­i­ence to the com­puter as these games did.

So, through the help of Beam­dog, I’ve got cop­ies of the Enhanced Edi­tion ver­sions of these games. And Vir­ginia, they are enhanced — for example, the Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition:

Run­ning on an upgraded and improved ver­sion of the Infin­ity Engine, Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edi­tion includes the entire Baldur’s Gate adven­ture, the Tales of the Sword Coast expan­sion pack, and never-before-seen con­tent includ­ing a new adven­ture and three new party mem­bers: the Cal­ishite monk Rasaad yn Bashir, Neera the wild mage, and Dorn Il-Khan, the evil blackguard.

I want my BGII and so do you!

Here’s how you can sup­port my fun­drais­ing efforts through a silent auc­tion and get one of these amaz­ingly enga­ging and chal­len­ging Dun­geons & Dragons world games, specifically:

I’m start­ing to feel a bit spoiled. Ser­i­ously, what was the last major board game release that ended up a dud? It sure as hell isn’t Battle­L­ore: Com­mand, the latest release from Fantasy Flight Games, which, des­pite a major omis­sion, is still a strong con­tender for digital board game of the year.

If you’re a fan of board games or just strategy games in gen­eral, Battle­L­ore: Com­mand is going to trip all your triggers.

Lately I’ve been play­ing a highly access­ible puzzle-rogue-like game called Hoplite.

Simple graph­ics and ever-increasing dif­fi­culty make this a quick and easy game to learn, but a very dif­fi­cult one to master.

You play the role of an adven­tur­ous Hoplite — a cit­izen war­rior of ancient Greece city-states. You’re quest­ing in ever-deeper dun­geons look­ing for the Fleece of Yendor whilst avoid­ing doom at the hands of vari­ous dun­geon inhabitants.

Each level is a smallish hex map with lava obstacles, oppon­ents, a temple and an exit to the next level down. Defeat the oppon­ents, heal or receive a boon at the temple and jour­ney onward. Simple right?

Well, yes, and no. Depend­ing on the num­ber of enemies and your strategy, your jour­ney could end on the first level, or you could retrieve the Fleece and win, or hang on to the fleece and quest even further.

I find myself com­ing back to Hoplite daily, for at least one or two rounds. As you can tell by the shot at the top, I’ve man­aged to recover the Fleece once (yay me!), but am won­der­ing what lies beyond…